apart from the ones for smaller children) PS: I now started reading your new book Listen to the Moon. Their one consolation is that they are stabled at a local farm and cared for by Emilie - a frail, young French girl - and her elderly grandfather.

He tries to join the army with Joey but is too young, so he promises Joey that, as soon as he is of age to enlist, he will go and find the beloved animal. Joey, the main character, was introduced in an auction where Albert's father bought Joey and then takes him to his farm in Devon, England, where Joey and Albert become friends and Albert teaches Joey to become a farm horse. During another charge, Topthorn and Joey carry Warren and Stewart into the enemy lines, and are the only two of many, but they are captured by the Germans.He learns that they will be auctioned off, likely to local butchers who will slaughter them for meat.

Emilie's grandfather understands how much Joey means to Albert and sells him to Joey for one penny, and makes Albert promise to tell the people back in his hometown about Emilie, who died of an illness. War Horse holds special appeal for horse lovers, who will care deeply about Joey's plight as he is pushed and pulled between the humans fighting World War I. The book was originally supposed to end with Joey being sold to a butcher for horse meat, and Emilie's grandfather giving an enamel horse pin to Albert to remember Joey by.

And the horse, Hebe, had her head out of, just over the top of the stable, and she was listening, that’s what I noticed, that the ears were going, and she knew - I knew she knew - that she had to stay there whilst this went on, because this kid wanted to talk, and the horse wanted to listen, and I knew this was a two way thing, and I wasn’t being sentimental, and I stood there and I listened, then I went and got the teachers, and brought them up through the vegetable garden, and we stood there in the shadows, and we listened to Billy talking, and they were completely amazed how this child who couldn’t get a word out, the words were simply flowing. The third inspiration for the book, was an old oil painting that belonged to Morpurgo's wife Clare: "It was a very frightening and alarming painting, not the sort you'd want to hang on a wall. War Horse filters the horror, inhumanity, and cruelty of war through the experience of its equine protagonist, Joey.

He is a hard worker and put many hours into Joey's training, placing Joey's needs squarely ahead of his own.Perhaps the most widely regarded novel about the extreme mental and physical trauma that soldiers endured during the first World War, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was first published in German in 1928. In May 2010, it was announced Steven Spielberg would direct the movie adaptation with Richard Curtis and Lee Hall writing the screenplay.

Friedrich sees how futile the fighting is and that the soldiers are being manipulated into nonsensical hostilities; all he wants is to go back to everyday life in Germany as Butcher Friedrich. Emilie grows to love the horses like Albert loved Joey, caring for their injuries and feeding them every night.Like Joey the horse, many of the casualties in this World War I novel understand little about why the battles are fought and lives are lost.